TV Producer: “Asian guys in my show? Not gonna happen!”

posted by Randall

By DTMuniversal

I sat in a boardroom meeting with TV executives and producers to hear about their new live action kids show Make It Pop, a K-pop (Korean pop) inspired musical comedy. I was excited to hear Asian culture was beginning to influence the western mainstream, and when they told me two out of the three main female leads were Asian girls (a Korean and a Chinese Malaysian), I was delighted… that was, until I found out the show had no Asian guys in them. Surprise (not really): only white guys are in the show as the love interests for the Asian girls.

After the producer’s presentation, during the Q&A, I mustered up the courage to ask “Will there be an Asian guy in it”? In a joking manner, the producer said “Nope! Never! Asian guys in my show, not gonna happen!”, while everyone else–albeit uncomfortably–laughed it off. Come on now, it’s a show about Korean pop. Half the artists from the K-pop industry are Asian men. Most K-pop fans are actually non-Asian girls / women who are a fan of K-pop men. Excluding Asian men in K-pop is like going to Hooters without scantily clad waitresses – nobody wins. The producer began to answer the question seriously and said he was hoping to get PSY to play the father of the main Korean girl. Mentally, I was shaking my head in disappointment.

Another comedic Asian goofball as the only thing to represent Asian men – what a great message we are sending to the Asian girls in our society – that your brother, cousin, father, and your Asian guy friends, are all just laughingstock, unattractive clowns who aren’t good enough for you, are incompetent, aren’t manly, and completely incapable of love, romance, attraction, being bad ass or cool.

We see these messages, the unattractive and emasculated images, and the omission of Asian men, repeated time and time again in the media like:

21 (Real life story of Asian MIT students are replaced with white actors)

The Forbidden Kingdom (only a white guy can save China and the Asian girl from evil)

The Wolverine (every Asian guy is useless and dies)

Full Metal Jacket (me so horny me love you long time)

The Last Airbender (all the ethnic heroes are replaced with white people, but the villains remain ethnic)

The Man With The Iron Fists (all Asian women are sexualized whores)

The Last Samurai (a white guy goes to Japan, kills your brother in law, sleeps with your sister in law, and beats your best friend in a sword fight after only training for a few months, and saves Japan)

47 Ronin (only a mixed Asian born from a white father can save the princess, the other 47 ronin are apparently useless)

Red Dawn (Chinese are evil, but they actually watch Hollywood movies so let’s make them North Korean instead)

Dragonball Evolution (Let’s make Goku a white guy but keep the Asian girl in it)

Pacific Rim (only a white guy can save the world and protect those poor helpless Asians and save that Asian girl from distress, Asian guys are useless and they die)

And of course most recently The Interview (white guys go to poor Asian country to make fun of / kill Asian guys while having sex with Asian women, while the supreme leader of North Korea is actually another emasculated idiot who secretly dreams of being American but is also useless and dies).

I could go on and list more examples, but that would likely be longer than The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books combined and not nearly as entertaining, so I’ll stop there.

After the meeting, a Korean woman in the company jokingly asked me if I was trying to create a role for myself. I began to explain to her that there’s an imbalance in mainstream media when it comes to Asian representation. She agreed, there were only Asian girls, no Asian guys. I asked if she had a son, she said yes. I said, wouldn’t you want your son to grow up and have positive role models in the media? She agreed. I too, would want that for my children. The other managers who overheard my conversation quietly agreed and said I had the best question in the Q&A session.

In retrospect, maybe I should have been more offended than I initially was (I was the only Asian person / Asian guy in the whole room). Could you imagine if I was a black man and he said “Nope! Never! Black guys in my show, not gonna happen!”? That probably wouldn’t have ended well. Which proves my understanding that Asians are the only ethnicity that can still be openly mocked, joked about, and ridiculed in the media and even in public with no repercussions.

But alas, now we’ll have another new show, where a new generation of little Asian girls growing up will buy into the fetishized objectified image of themselves portrayed in these shows, and buy into the idea that they can be Asian and cool, but only if it serves the fantasies of white men. Last I recall, Korean pop culture was not invented and owned by white guys. But after watching the promo trailer for this show, that definitely seems to be the case.

The next generation of Asian boys will be left out once again, creating the angry, bitter, frustrated men you see here in today’s world, neglected out of love and affection from society (and even from women of their own ethnicity) – and its not because they’re incapable of being a man – it’s because everyone in society has already pre-judged what their image / idea of an Asian guy is without ever meeting one. The media has already defined Asian men for them. Consequentially, these Asian men grow up to believe in Hollywood’s brainwashing, and that is where the racial self-hate, low self esteem, social awkwardness, passivity, and negativity comes from. In the most extreme cases, you get psychos who start picking up a gun or knife and mass murdering innocent people because they feel neglected from society.

Thankfully, I am not one of these men, as I grew up with strong male role models in my brother and father. But I see a lot of people out there who are less fortunate and have become victims of this massive Hollywood brainwashing – and this is why I chose to speak up about it. Some may be quick to call this a whiny rant, but if you can take a moment of your time to use the internet to look up and watch the films and television shows I’ve cited, you’ll find there’s more than enough evidence to support my claims. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable, and not many will notice these things, and even less will choose to speak up about them. If I have to be labeled as a “bad guy” for speaking up about them, in hopes to raise awareness about these issues to help others realize the bias and damaging effects of the media, then so be it.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”: Exactly – or else he IS a joke! Does he not understand who the biggest draws are in KPop? Sure there are very popular female groups but for most of us who are insane about KPop (you know, FEMALES) it is the GUYS we think of. TVXQ, JYJ, Big Bang, Super Junior, EXO, etc etc. This idiot – he will have his stupid show, it will get poor ratings cause no male KPop, & then will say – look, Asian shows aren’t popular.
As that Hallyu wave sweeps across the nation via concerts & dramas direct from S. Korea, courtesy of Drama Fever, etc. HA!

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen. : What is this producer’s name? Perhaps he can say such words to a small room, but does he have the courage to utter such blatant racism to all of America?

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guys in my show? Not going to happen.”: Hopefully this show will fail. Sadly the list above doesn’t even count the number of times an Asian girl cheated on an Asian guy with a non-asian guy.

RE: TV Producer: Asian Guys in my show? Not going to happen: To be honest it does come off as a whiny rant a little, so I am glad that is was mentioned, but the points are all very valid. I would suggest revising this more so that it is able to convince others, outside of other Asians, particularly Asian men, of your concerns and therefore reach a larger audience.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian Guys in my show? Not going to happen.”:The truth is uncomfortable and it has to sound whiny to some degree. Hollywood is nice and loud with their brand of bias / racism and you don’t see them toning that crap down. Check out Eddie Huang and Fresh Off The Boat. Watering it down means losing your message.

Im an Asian girl and like Asian guys, and so do my other Asian friends. In Korea its even looked down upon for Korean girls to marry a white guy (look up Korean stereotypes by Eat Your Kimchi on youtube) I think the Korean women doesn’t have a mixed son >~< unless she's like 2nd or 3rd gen Korean-American. Not solely based on stereotypes and the Asian mindset, but not everyone is influenced by the media ;P

RE: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”:Oh get over yourself, “white guy.” Believe it or not, there are Asian girls out there that love Asian guys and would probably never date a white boy. I’m one of them.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”: The studios need your $$ more than you need their craps.
These crappy roles should never be taken over your pride and dignity.
Either we save up and collaborate with Asia’s studios or start your own.
Let them crash and burn.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”: I totally agree, Speed! We need to work together and create our own content that tell OUR stories. To that end, I am working on putting myself in that position to work with like-minded, passionate people to make this a reality.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guys in my show? Not going to happen.”: I don’t see the Asian American community doing anything about it. This is why they keep doing this over and over again. When is enough enough? Are you not outraged yet?

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen:” : quite honestly, I am pretty sure that most asians really just don’t care all that much (me included). There are more important things to worry about.

Re: TV Producer: "Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen?": That's an interesting comment, Brarghflargle. considering this story has generated more comments than any other story in the 27 month history of this blog.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian Guy in my show. Not going to happen.”: They want to use Asian girls for the sex appeal but won’t put guys in because they want to emasculate them. For Hollywood if it’s not white it’s not right. It’s very disgusting.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen.”: OMG this is WHY I watch KDramas almost exclusively!!!! This producer is an IDIOT! Once again, they have totally offended one of their main demographics (the one that S.KOREA is very aware of but that the US likes to placate w/delightful stuff like the Housewives series) – yep, that would be older women – that 25+ group of people who outnumber everybody & buy a bunch of things, and BTW think that Korean pop stars are defined by RAIN, JaeJoong & GDragon, not Psy. I am beyond outraged. I’m paying big bucks to the streaming sites that show Asian dramas and movies – and I’m hardly alone.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guys in my show. Not going to happen.” :No you are not alone, Teleriferchnyfain (says the 50+ black woman who is a big kpop and kdrama fan and pays for access to Korean content on at least 3 streaming sites). We comprise an international body of fans who are well aware that that kpop started with the guys and the girl groups came later on. Obviously this guy and his company have not done their homework and are stupid idiots. Not just because of his idiotic remark, but because he thinks Psy is the biggest thing in kpop……hopefully you guys will go back to the drawing board. Actually, forget about this project all together cause you have no idea what you’re doing!

If I lived in the US, I would take to the streets. In fact, despite living in Europe I should take to the streets regardless. We import 90% of all our entertainment from USA. The problems of Asian Americans affect Asians in Europe just as badly. Your problems are our problems too.

This is a rare opportunity for young Asian males to shine and defy racial stereotypes, and provide the positive rolemodels for children that we were deprived of – and this arrogant swine just brushes us aside as if we don’t matter?

Instead he is content continuing the tradition of stealing our culture, fetishizising our sisters and brainwash us with the “white is right” mantra for yet another generation?

This whole Asian male emasculation campaign started as retaliation of the Japanese attack on pearl harbor, and has been so ingrained in the media culture that our entire generation can’t remember a time when we were not being suppressed. Decades later our entire race is still being bullied by people who don’t even remember why they were bullying us in the first place. It. Just. Doesn’t. End.

If this show airs and we do not see a positive portrayal of our brothers, this injustice will not go unanswered.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen’:This is correct, and the fact that the US media (like this guy) can’t differentiate Japanese from Korean & Chinese culture – well, basically refusing to depict Asian males because of Pearl Harbor is like saying you can’t have European men depicted positively in films because of Nazis. Let that sink in for a second….

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guys in my show? Not going to happen.”: This emasculation of Asian men started before Pearl Harbor. It began when white America started to feel threatened by the immigration of Chinese and Japanese (and to a lesser extent Korean) to the US back in the early 1900’s. Asian males were portrayed either as evil sexed men likely to prey upon white women, or wimps. Either way the stereotype is dehumanizing.

TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”: Hey, your mild response was the problem, Asian guy. Folks think you’re wimpy because there’s no visible anger. In America, it’s the thing that gets people’s attention. May I encourage you to be your true self and stand up and protest like everyone else does. Now get rolling.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen.”: I would say in general Asian guys are more manly than most American boys are in terms of family values, dedication, work ethic and determination. When I imagine a masculine white man, I think burly, uneducated, thinks only about football, lot of hair. When I think about a masculine Asian man, I think strong-willed, high intelligence, responsibility and chivalrous. I think it might be the mandatory military service in Korea… but this producer has no idea… and I wonder if it’s not really his fault. I remember distinctly thinking that Korean men were more manly than Korean American men when I lived in Korea. Go figure.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”: What use is this post if nobody is going to do anything about this anyways except complain anonymously on the internet. and you know what? The Asians involved with this show are sellouts.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”:The author of this post “mustered up the courage” to ask a question about whether there would be an Asian male in the production and when he was more or less mocked for his question, didn’t say anything but instead kept quiet and posted an anonymous rant on the Internet. Way to rebuke the stereotypes you so harshly criticize in your post about stereotypes of weak male Asians in Hollywood.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen?”:Can you “out” this white producer? Please display his name so we can contact him and give him a hard time. We need to be more explicit and direct with these white idiots so that we can DEMAND better representation for Asian men!

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen”:After browsing through Mr. Lynch’s imdb profile in a hope that he might actually have been joking, I found that the last time he cast an Asian American male was in 2011 when he cast Mark Daugherty in “Bucket and Skinners Epic Adventures” as (surprise) “Nerdy Kid” for one episode.

Meanwhile, he gave Asian American actress Tiffany Espensen a leading role in the same show. I’m starting to think this guy might actually have yellow fever and doesn’t like competition.

RE: TV Producers: “Asian guys in my show? Not going to happen”: Actually, I expect that the myopic producers, writers, and directors of this will do the following:

1) Each girl will have a white BF even if that BF is a complete nerd.
2) All Asian males in support or ancillary roles will be nerdy, inarticulate, and effeminate and not say anything useful
3) All white males will be portrayed as cool, masculine, etc..

Same old trope that Hollywood has been dishing out for years. No ingenuity, no creativeness, no progressiveness.
We cannot expect anything from an institution whose sole purpose is to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
We cannot expect change from powers that be who have never been on the receiving end of such treatment.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen.” : Well, boycott this show. Don’t watch. WRite to advertisers and the network and tell them you won’t buy their products if they support this show.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen”: Just an example of white privileged hollywood marginalizing Asian guys again. Contact the producers or whoever here and voice your opinion. The more we suffer in silence. The more Asian girls are going to throw themselves at white guys over privileges.http://tomlynchco.com/contact/

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen”: Nice tip, just sent them a nastygram, all others should do the same, speak up, African-americans and Latinos would, Asians need to as well, what someone commented is true, you have to make noise for this to change and pick a fight with Thomas Lynch.

TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen”: Why would you be silent? The most pointed argument that people need to be hearing is that the Asian men have money to spend and by thusly alienating this growingly powerful demographic is not smart and they’re losing out on opportunity and dollars. They’re behind the curve.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen”: Always happened, even in cartoons like family guy or The Simpsons or Drawn Together & Futurama, they always put all the Asians like easy sluts that fall in love with the white guy, I went to Japan, Korea and China, always there is an old man that feels that everyone should speak to him in English (even if not his country) and that feels that every girls has to (have sex with him).

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen.” : Randall, great article! I would like to know where this producer actually said about no Asian guys on his show. Was it in the US and/or California? Was his comment videotaped and audio recorded? If so, he just may have opened himself up to a employment discrimination investigation by the federal government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the state of CA’s Dept of Fair Employment and Housing. All that need to happen is to have an Asian actor apply for a opening and get turn down. Then he can file a discrimination complaint with these two agencies so they can turn the heat on. Bringing attention like you did is great but the most important step is make sure jerks like him go through an official government discrimination investigation especially in a company town like Hollywood which likes to pretend that it embraces diversity, liberal, and openminded.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen?: “I agree with you almost completely, the only part I disagree with is Red Dawn, in it the Chinese are actually our allies against Russia. And I refuse to believe there is a remake

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen?”: If only more Asians would support Asian American independent film – we would have a market, and our actors could get noticed, etc. Come to CAAMFest or an AA Film Fest Near You!

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen.”: Speaking as a non Asian woman who loves Kpop, the biggest draw is the the Asian men, not the girls. Apart from the looks factor, in my opinion the boy groups are much more talented and interesting than the girl groups. Besides being racist, they’re incredibly stupid if they want to produce a show about Kpop without Asian guys, because they’ll lose out on 90% of their fan base right there, especially if they’re appealing to tweens, as I see they are.

TO Curioser & Curioser RE: TV Producer: "Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen." : The article you are referring to you was not written by Randall, but posted by him. The article was written by someone who wished to be identified as DTMUniversal. He wrote this blog at great personal risk to his own career and should be commended for this courage.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy on my show? Not going to happen”:They should fire the producer, but the show is going to fail anyway. White girls into kpop want to see kpop boys. Asian girls into kpop want to see kpop boys. Not asian sell out girls who act white. What are they thinking.

RE: TV Producer: “Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen.” :It would be great if someone translates this into Chinese and post it on all the Chinese sites. After all, China is a huge market for Hollywood. If Chinese understands how Asians are not properly represented in Hollywood (unfortunately not many are smart enough to figure this out), maybe they would stop watching Hollywood movies until we are properly portrayed. I for one will not watch the Fast and Furious franchise anymore without Han. We should just hit Hollywood at their pocket book.

RE: Asian guys in my show? Not going to happen: Thank you for speaking up about this. I have been a fan of Korean music since before K-POP became K-pop. While I think it is such a beautiful thing that a big part of my culture is being spread across the world, things like this just annoy me. The original Korean music industry was composed of supremely male performers(not to say that there werent any kick ass girl performers either heehee). Seotaeji, Jinusean, 1tym, G.O.D, Sechskies, H.O.T, Shinhwa, TVXQ… and the list goes on. These groups were idolized so much in Korea… Being in these groups made these men for life — so it doesnt make sense that there are no asian boys in this show. It`s completely unrealistic. This show seems to be acting like it knows K-Pop, but from a non-Korean perspective. I feel like this is just another portal for non-asian producers to take a slice of cake that they dont necessarily have any business in taking. That bothers me. These people are just making this what they want to make it. Sorry for the rant. This idea of this show just made me cringe. Thanks for addressing this.

RE: Asian Guy in my show? Not going to happen: The majority of white men in Hollywood are racist pigs. White people enslaved blacks as well. This is very, old news. Why are you surprised? I’m white BTW.

RE: Asian guys on my show. Not going to happen: I was all in agreement with you and supporting you, until i read “Chinese are evil…” WTF! I thought I read it wrong. Nope, i didn’t. That’s what it says. If that’s how you feel about every Chinese person, then you’re about as open minded as that producer you’ve been ranting about.

RE: Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen: This is just a microcosm of whats been happening for the past couple of decades. The social engineering/brainwashing of Asian men and women of America.

In early America, they used anti miscegenation laws to prevent Asian men from marrying American women. This was used to keep their communities small and keep their population from growing.

If you’re unable to marry, you’re unable to have kids. Thus destroying the ability for Asians to form big families and build large communities.

This racist law wasn’t banned until 1967. More than a 100 years later! By then, the Asian men who came in the 1850s were either too old to have kids or already have died. Nevertheless, their population control agenda was a success.

Today, this type of agenda is still happening to Asian Americans.

Since they can’t use racist laws anymore, they’re using other covert methods such as the media to change the perception of what people think of Asian men and women. They’ve been so successful in this process, most than half of the young Asian American population today are engaged in interracial relationships.

The interracial relationship is so high in the Asian American community, by 2050, the numbers of Asian Americans will reduce to half of what it is now currently.

What was done hundreds of years ago (keeping the Asian population low) is still happening today.

Only difference today is, they’re destroying the bond and relationship between Asian men and women.

RE: Asian guy in my show? Not going to happen: NO asian guys? No reason for me to watch that Show. I’d so go for an asian guy white girl couple. But the only show in the Western medias that does that is the walking Dead. And I really adore Maggie and Glenn.

RE: Asian Guys in my show? Not going to happen: Thanks for the courage of the author to raise this issue. I was tired of watching the White males and Asian girls without a leading Asian guy in all the movies/shows in the American media. I got tired of being controlled by racist pigs.

What about we copy black Americans by creating our own studio and media networks, and recruit Asian actors guys and girls. Being a Vietnamese man, I want to see a Vietnamese actor someday.

RE: Asian guy in my show, not going to happen: Like you, I’m getting really tired of being marginalized. Growing up, I suffered a lot of self-hate and hatred towards other Asian men. It wasn’t until close to the 4th decade of my life that I finally realized what the f–ing media was doing.

When I see socially-retarded white guys get the girls, it really hurts. It hurts more when out of their ignorance, white privilege, or whatever that they call me racist!

I think we should get all the AAPI activist together and just start filing frivolous lawsuits whenever yet another useless Hollywood producer decides to yellow-face us. Scare these people into submission and give them a taste of the shit they have been doling out for decades now.

RE: Asian guys in my show? Not gonna happen: This comment “Growing up, I suffered a lot of self-hate and hatred towards other Asian men. It wasn’t until close to the 4th decade of my life that I finally realized what the f–ing media was doing.” could perfectly have been written by me. I’m close to 40 and I was raised between White people. I took the effort to integrate myself totally, but going through heaps of self-hate just for being grown up as an Asian male. And yet, it doesn’t stop as this kind of sickening American supremacist propaganda produced by the American media… pops out. What sickens me the most is, for god sake, this show is addressed to preteen kids. Knowing its producer is such a supremacist with an AF fetish is DISGUSTING. And this, is the kind of sick people that is feeding our children nasty ideas of self hate and low esteem. Asian girls only deserve White males and Asian boys plainly deserve nothing but get their asses kicked by life(nerds) or the manly AM if they get to Hollywood. They should ban this producer from producing more TV shows, if he had said that very same sentence with ‘Black’ instead of ‘Asian’ he would have seen rain wrath on him and watched his sorry ass kicked out of the industry.
The ‘doll test’ videos anybody can watch on youtube proves that children are seriously affected by this kind of poisonous messages, we can’t watch to the other side any longer.

RE: Asian guys in my show? Not gonna happen: This producer is stupid to think that he can get away with whitewashing kpop and removing all Asian men. In season two the show did include an Asian male singer, but still, the show is inaccurate at depicting Asian dating life in America. The majority of Asian American girls date Asian American guy so one Asian-Asian couple verses two Asian-White couple is very inaccurate. I as an Asian girl know about Hollywood whitewashing, but I never was a victim to it because I only watched Korean t.v. shows as a young girl and studied my culture as a teenager so that I can present a project in front of my history class about the awesome Korean culture that has made me proud as a Korean. I love Korean guys too, not only because of how they are depicted in Korean dramas, but because of the culture that has made Korean men resilient, caring, strong, determined, kind, etc. Korean culture has shaped Korean men as strong men who can take care of their families and I love that. Don’t worry Asian men, there are a lot Asian American women out there like me who are smart enough to know what’s going on and we will always remain your women no matter what, because we love you and respect you.

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